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Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts
- imnotlost 9mo agoThe correct typeface for the current U.S. administration would of course be Comic Sans or perhaps Comic Serif for double-super-serious documents.
- Suzuran 9mo agoFraktur.
- andybak 9mo ago:-/
- tempodox 9mo agoFraktur would be apt as the oldest existing typeface. This administration and its supporters are so backward, it makes the 1600s look like mega-liberal ultra-modern science fiction. I’m just waiting for an executive order reintroducing cuneiform.
- Y_Y 9mo ago> Martin Bormann issued a circular (the "normal type decree") to all public offices which declared Fraktur (and its corollary, the Sütterlin-based handwriting) to be Judenlettern (Jewish letters) and prohibited their further use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur I don't know if you meant to invoke pro/anti-Nazi associations with this typeface but it's unfortunate that such a fantastic lettering style carries around a poisonous historical connotation.
- throwaway173738 9mo agoWhy is that poisonous? It sounds like Fraktur was rejected by Nazi Germany which isn’t a bad thing at all.
- Y_Y 9mo agoDo you know anything about the Nazis, other than that they are bad? They used Fraktur extensively before 1941 and it's closely associated with Nazi imagery. This is all explained in that link I posted. I prefer to think of Lie groups, but it's rife in the Nazi propaganda of the 30s, official documents etc.
- throwaway173738 9mo agoInteresting. So it’s more a case of “we have always been at war with Oceania”
- Suzuran 9mo agoI am aware (of the Judenlettern decree). The reference to exactly this was intentional. (Edit to make this really obvious: The joke here is that "fraktur = nazis" became such a meme that the nazis themselves were annoyed by it and forbade its use, but this is exactly the kind of thing the present administration would either be unaware of or simply ignore and then use fraktur intentionally to pander to neo-nazis.)
- Y_Y 9mo agoThanks for spelling it out. I had a feeling that's the point you were making, but that level of subtlety has a hard time getting through, even on highbrow hn. Hence I like to err on the side of spelling things out, especially since I'm much more often a reader than a writer.
- johannes1234321 9mo agoNo, Comic sans is too woke. In seriousness: Comic Sans seems to be a good font for dyslexic people and helps them read. https://dyslexichelp.org/why-is-comic-sans-good-for-dyslexia/ https://dyslexichelp.org/why-is-comic-sans-good-for-dyslexia...
- sho_hn 9mo agoNot sure why you are getting downvoted. Dropping Calibri was done precisely because it was associated with a reason like this, so you're entirely right.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- mlfreeman 9mo agoAnd Wingdings for classified material!
- robocat 9mo ago> Comic Serif https://www.hvdfonts.com/fonts/hvd-comic-serif https://www.hvdfonts.com/fonts/hvd-comic-serif
- rchowe 9mo agoUsing either Calibri or Times New Roman makes it look like you did not put any thought into your brand and chose the default in Microsoft Word. The State department probably has certain constraints (i.e. they likely have to choose one of the fonts that ships with Microsoft Word, and possibly a subset of that that also ships on macOS), but they could definitely choose better than the default. I find the narrow serif typefaces such as Century Schoolbook a bit harder to read than ones with more normal spacing, and I think the US government should optimize for legibility and accessibility over style in routine communications. Palatino or Garamond would probably be my choices.
- xattt 9mo agoIt’s the US government, and it could easily develop their own Liberty- or Freedom-type if the current administration wanted to leave their own mark.
- theandrewbailey 9mo agohttps://public-sans.digital.gov/ https://public-sans.digital.gov/
- beej71 9mo agoThat actually doesn't look horrible to my untrained eye. But the web page mentions accessibility, so I'm a little bit surprised it still exists.
- poly2it 9mo agoAdministered during none other than the first term of Trump, as mentioned in the article!
- mrweasel 9mo agoThat just makes it incredibly silly. A good argument from the current administration would have been to pick Public Sans and argue: We paid good money to have a good, generic, license free font developed for the government, and the previous administration went with a font that will cost us money in terms of licensing (not sure how true that might be, but it's potentially true, if used outside Microsoft Word). But the current Trump administration has a fun way of forgetting everything done during his first presidency. Even the smart choices. I can't imagine how much all this rebranding is costing the US taxpayers.
- magnio 9mo agoShouldn't public documents by the government use a free and libre font? In fact, the mentioned Public Sans developed by the US federal government seems to be a great option, as it actually distinguishes the lowercase l and the uppercase I, something that, ironically, all suggested sans-serif alternatives fail to do.
- gumby271 9mo agoYou would hope, but changing this font isn't about making anything better, it's that Calibre was apparently a DEI font and had to go. I can't imagine these people thinking highly of an open source (Oooh communism) font that's also designed with accessibility in mind.
- b40d-48b2-979e 9mo agoAre we still doing the communism thing? I thought the bogeyman is socialism now. In any case, it would be nice to have some consistency across the government, and if they want to make a change, at least take prior works into account like what the Congress or SCOTUS are doing in their official texts.
- toast0 9mo agoTimes New Roman is available at no cost under the Microsoft Core Fonts for the Web. (Microsoft no longer distributes this, but the license allows redistribution and redistribution is popular). AFAIK, Apple explicitly licenses the fonts and most open source OS distributions have a package for these fonts. It's not libre, but font copyright is weird anyway, and the federal government doesn't always need to follow copyright.
- userbinator 9mo agoand the federal government doesn't always need to follow copyright It's worth noting that most if not all works created by the government are in the public domain. There are some exceptions but PD is the default.
- spatley 9mo ago
- symbogra 9mo agoWow, the sample shows that 15 point Calibri on official government documents was truly awful. In software when we make a mistake that causes some production issue the best first action is almost always to roll back. Maybe 14 pt TNR isn't the best, but rolling back to it is a defensible decision.
- alex_suzuki 9mo agoAt some point in the past I read that serif fonts are better for readability, as the supports at the base of the letters form a line and help the eye stay “on track”. This is never mentioned in TFA, so I assume it’s an urban legend? Personally I much prefer serif fonts when reading longer texts.
- phantom784 9mo agoI was once taught that serif fonts are better in print, and sans-serif is better on a screen.
- skywhopper 9mo agoThis was definitely true in the days before hi-res screens and good anti-aliasing, simply because the serifs get lost or become noise in lower-resolution settings. It’s probably less true today. Of course, in terms of accessibility, there are any number of reasons why someone might prefer to read content in any number of typefaces. Certain typefaces are better for folks with dyslexia. Others may be better for certain folks with ADHD. People with low vision may just prefer a larger typeface. We have these amazing machines we’ve invented that can display the same text in any number of different ways. At this point, it seems ridiculous to need to mandate a specific typeface for electronic usage. Sure, pick a well-regarded default, but if we want to mandate something, it should be that software provides tools to allow users to adjust textual elements of documents they are reading to suit their own needs.
- wonger_ 9mo agoThanks for that. I thought the same as phantom784 and never updated my opinion for hi-res screens. Related to choosing defaults: I like these tips for evaluating the legibility of a body typeface: https://prowebtype.com/selecting-body-text/ https://prowebtype.com/selecting-body-text/ They mention one serif advantage, that "most serif typefaces are often ideal choices for reading text due to the noticeable strokes in their ascenders and descenders."
- mark-r 9mo ago
- swed420 9mo ago[flagged]
- gordonhart 9mo agoA few HN commenting guidelines might apply here: > Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
- swed420 9mo ago> Eschew flamebait. Arguably the OP borders on flamebait if that's the standard. > Avoid generic tangents. OP encapsulates an example of my comment, and is not a generic tangent. > Omit internet tropes. meme != trope > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. Like the first point, all or nothing. > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Point taken.
- School-Cotton 9mo agoHN isn’t really for memes and quippy references. That’s the main reason you got downvoted, regardless of whether your substantive political point is a good one or not. The original comment matches the vibe of Reddit or Twitter a lot better than HN.
- swed420 9mo agoIn that case, we'd better stop saying "Stallman was right"
- School-Cotton 9mo agoYes, we should, that would be great.
- 9mo ago
- coffeefirst 9mo agoWell, the correct traditional font for State should really be Courier, because “Real America” used typewriters for all correspondence.
- 2b3a51 9mo agoI was sort of thinking that these 'cables' ought really to be rendered in a teletypewriter font[1], but then having lower case would be anachronistic. My teacher training (quite a few decades ago) suggested that for people with dyslexia you should set large quantities of text; # right ragged so inter-word spacing constant; # without hyphenation; # with line spacing larger than word spacing; # and broken up into sections with headings that describe the content of the section. (As it happens I rarely need to use large chunks of text in basic maths teaching) [1] https://www.almendron.com/tribuna/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/116178.pdf https://www.almendron.com/tribuna/wp-content/uploads/2021/04... Kennan's notorious cable from 1946 looks as if it would have severe consequences to me.
- willturman 9mo agoDocuments in handwritten Jeffersonian calligraphy as a service.
- tolerance 9mo agoThis was a terrific, reasonable take on this “controversy”. I have to admit that the correspondence set in Calibri looks like something dispatched from a leasing office. Imagine reading the Warren Commission report set in that. The author seems to settle on the consensus that surrounded TNR before this exchange made the news. It’s banal. At times it signals to its original objectives (e.g., Prof. Dr. style websites [1]). But still banal more often than not. I love Univers. But I don’t think there’s anyone in public office with enough influence and swagger to ever enforce it. At the same time I have a bad feeling about the attention that decisions like this draw and what it may lead to. The article does a great job at portraying the general incompetence in both parties. I can imagine Beto O’Rourke somewhere dreaming about styling all government communiqués like a page out of Ray Gun. Planning his come back. To set anything issued from Ted Cruz’s office in Zapf Dingbats. War. [1]: https://contemporary-home-computing.org/prof-dr-style/ https://contemporary-home-computing.org/prof-dr-style/
- wavefunction 9mo agoI suppose the administration's typo-ridden nonsense formatted with a serif-font MIGHT appear more professional. It's certainly possible, not impossible.
- tolerance 9mo agoRight. Now imagine something like this: > In response, based upon the cumulative effects of these hostile acts against the citizens and interests of the United States and friendly foreign nations, the President recognized that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations. The President directed the Department of War to conduct operations against them pursuant to the law of armed conflict. The United States has now reached a critical point where we must use force in self-defense and defense of others against the ongoing attacks by these designated terrorist organizations. <https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/SAP-SJRes90.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/SAP-SJ...> In “Carlito”! <https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Carlito https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Carlito>
- 9mo ago
- TomMasz 9mo agoSadly, all that matters is it's free of any "DEI" connotations.
- LucasFonts 9mo agoOur studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO Luc(as) de Groot’s thoughts on the matter: Back to bad... Deciding to ditch Calibri as a ‘wasteful diversity’ font is both hilarious and sad. I designed Calibri to make reading on modern computer screens easier, and in 2006 Microsoft chose it to replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite. Microsoft moved away from Times for good reasons. Calibri performs exceptionally well at small sizes and on standard office monitors, whereas serif fonts like Times New Roman create more visual disturbance. Although serif fonts work well on high-resolution displays, such as those found on modern smartphones, the serifs can introduce unnecessary visual noise on typical office screens and be particularly problematic for users with impaired vision, such as older adults. Professional typography can be achieved with serif or sans serif fonts. However, that is not very easy with Times New Roman, a typeface older than the current president. Originally crafted in Great Britain for newspaper printing, Times was optimised for paper, with each letterform meticulously cut and tested for specific sizes. In the digital era, larger-size drawings were repurposed as models, resulting in a typeface that appears too thin and sharp when printed at a high quality. Depending on the situation, fonts with serifs are often considered more classic, but they take more work to get right. While a skilled typographer can produce excellent results with Times New Roman, using the digital default version is not considered professional practice. This font only offers two weights, Regular and Bold, and the Bold version has a very different design that does not fit well. There are many better serif typefaces available. The digital version of Times New Roman, developed in the early days of computing, includes only minimal adjustments to letter pairs. This is particularly noticeable in all-capital words such as ‘CHICAGO’, where the spacing is inconsistent: the letters ‘HIC’ are tightly packed, while ‘CAG’ are spaced too far apart. By contrast, Calibri incorporates extensive spacing adjustments and language-specific refinements. This decision takes the administration back to the past and back to bad. (Microsoft could not rectify spacing issues in Times New Roman without altering the appearance of existing documents.)
- loughnane 9mo agoFyi since your account is new. It’s a faux pas here to have a “company” account.
- austy69 9mo ago> The general public doesn’t perceive serif typefaces as professional and authoritative, a priori, before prioritizing their use in formal settings. Instead, people first observe that government, academia, and corporate workplaces disproportionately use serif faces — or are trained to use them — and only then infer that serifs must mean professionalism and authority. A difficult to stomach claim followed up with evidence that I think supports the opposite than the author intended: the font being in used in The Times of London, which is indeed authoritative and professional despite it being written on cheap paper. On another note, I would throw up if I had to read legal documents all day in a sans-serif font.
- croes 9mo agoThe font was used by the London Times until 1972. And nobody thinks of the London Times when he sees Times New Roman. It’s just a default font many used in Word.
- unethical_ban 9mo agoI too stopped when I read that sentence. It's like saying someone can't tell the difference in professionalism between someone in a well tailored three piece suit vs. a sweater and jeans until they've been taught. Ornateness itself is associated with being attentive to detail and likely more wealthy. And even if you take them at their word, it's a distinction without a difference. Serif is known to be more professional. But! As many have pointed out, and he does about TNR in the article: the default font for documents tends to suggest apathy. That argument against TNR is just as strong for Calibri. And there are far better looking, more functional fonts than either of these two.
- tevon 9mo agoCompletely agree. This statement is immediately disproven by the authors following points. Eg pointing out that the supreme court, and other authoritative bodies exclusively use serif fonts... Of course there is no "a priori", the general public doesn't know what a letter is "a priori" until they are taught. At the same time they are taught which fonts are formal and authoritative and which are not. Everyone knows Comic Sans is not appropriate for a legal brief. No matter if that is "a priori" or not.
- jamesliudotcc 9mo agoAs for Calibri, even Microsoft has moved on. They designed a successor font family for even better readability, and that happened before the State Department changed to Calibri. It also has serif variants. https://microsoft.design/articles/a-change-of-typeface-microsoft-s-new-default-font-has-arrived/ https://microsoft.design/articles/a-change-of-typeface-micro... No knock on Calibri, which I admire. (edited to put the link on its own line.)
- otterley 9mo agoThis was discussed in the article.
- djoldman 9mo agoFrom the linked https://federalcourt.press/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Eighth-Circuit-Checklist.pdf https://federalcourt.press/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Eighth... > Typographic decisions should be made for a purpose. The Times of London chose the typeface Times New Roman to serve an audience looking for a quick read. Lawyers don’t want their audience to read fast and throw the document away; they want to maximize retention. Achieving that goal requires a different approach—different typefaces, different column widths, different writing conventions. Briefs are like books rather than newspapers. The most important piece of advice we can offer is this: read some good books and try to make your briefs more like them. This is somewhat ironic as, if I'm not mistaken, it is written by lawyers and uses Times New Roman. (Does the 8th circuit want the reader to read fast and throw the document away?)
- llm_nerd 9mo ago"Instead, people first observe that government, academia, and corporate workplaces disproportionately use serif faces — or are trained to use them — and only then infer that serifs must mean professionalism and authority." This is an aside, but many people would benefit from appreciating what is observed here, because it impacts an enormous numbers of preferences and perceptions people hold. A good example is 24 FPS in cinema, which we generally attribute to high quality movies, baked in our value system via a technical/financial limit imposed a century ago. If a movie is presented any higher it gets mentally mapped with soap operas and low quality sitcoms, and it is disorienting to people. The Hobbit tried upping to 48FPS and it was described as "resembling low-budget video like American daytime soap operas rather than cinematic film". Higher quality TV dramas shoot at 24 FPS, intentionally forcing the 3:2 pulldown for TV presentation to signal "no, compare me to a movie not those other TV shows". There are many areas in our life where we're judging things by this signalling criteria, and not by any real objective measure, yet people will often invent objective measures to assuage themselves that their values aren't so easily manipulated. Bring up 24FPS being a baked in limitation rather than some pinnacle of film making and many will start contriving why no, they actually prefer it because... It's all just noise.
- freetanga 9mo agoI guess this is the thing preventing the release of the Epsteins files… I imagine a 20-strong commission deciding whether to publish them in colibri or times new Roman. Taxes at work
- Kwpolska 9mo ago> The Supreme Court’s […] opinions are typeset in Century Schoolbook from that family. Originating in the 19th century, the typeface features more expansive proportions, balanced stroke contrast, and an elegant form, exuding a far more assertive presence than Times New Roman. As the name suggests, it also began life as a textbook face, optimized for legibility. With proper typesetting, it reads far better than a haphazardly produced Word document set in Times New Roman. The example document is typeset in Century Schoolbook, with the exception of "SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES", which is typeset in Times New Roman.
- constantcrying 9mo agoSure, Times New Roman is not a great font and comes with many negative connotations. But having official government communication look like a highschoolers first digital essay is even worse. The obvious solution is doing what many large companies, as well as other governments are doing. Create your own Font. (e.g. https://styleguide.bundesregierung.de/sg-de/basiselemente/schriften https://styleguide.bundesregierung.de/sg-de/basiselemente/sc... https://www.ibm.com/plex/ https://www.ibm.com/plex/)
- cocodill 9mo agoThe Bundesregierung just paid some one to reinvent Calibri and Cambria but in ugly.
- piker 9mo agoOne thing that I don’t see much mentioned in the article or the comments is that for Word documents at least, Times New Roman may be a more portable default if you want the document to render identically across platforms. Not everyone has Word and Word proprietary fonts installed. Times is proprietary but available on Linux and MacOS and has a metric compatible substitute in the open source. Not sure about Calibre. Yes, fonts can be bundled with a document but that might impose legal considerations as well as technical. Using more "standard" fonts like Times New Roman might thus help fight against the word processing monopoly.
- necovek 9mo agoMost font licenses allow one to embed it into a document and then use that document as intended (to print, view...), but do not extend the license to the document recipient to extract the font and use it in newly created documents. Using a common font like Times-compatible (metrics-wise) does help to an extent, but it can still fall off quickly with different ligatures, Unicode-combining character support etc. To be honest, I've never seen a Word document that looks exactly the same when opened on two Windows computers, even if those two computers should be roughly the same (corporate managed computers): I remember it used to be affected by print settings back in the day, but not sure what triggers it today. Admittedly, I only use Windows computers and Word documents the last few days at work, as I've been in the Linux world for the last ~27 years otherwise.
- piker 9mo ago> Most font licenses allow one to embed it into a document and then use that document as intended (to print, view...), but do not extend the license to the document recipient to extract the font and use it in newly created documents. Yes, but most users wouldn't have a clue that is even an issue or why and how to do the embedding.
- atorodius 9mo agoTangential but did not see it mentioned: Calibri must have been the Microsoft Word default at some point, at least in some parts of the world, because seeing it makes me think this is a Word document by a person that did not change the default font.
- tuetuopay 9mo agoIt absolutely was, from Office 2007 up to Office 365 where they switched to Aptos (2023-ish?)
- internet2000 9mo agoThis blog post has good fundamentals but ends up missing the mark. Is Times New Roman the perfect serif? Obviously not. Is it better than Calibri? Yes. Is “hey go back to how things were before” the simplest plan to execute? Also yes. I personally would’ve liked Georgia since I imagine that’s similarly ubiquitous. People suggesting a custom typeface are out of their mind.
- mark-r 9mo agoI took a close look at Georgia a few years back, and found myself surprised by how much I liked it. Unfortunately both Georgia and Calibri are owned by Microsoft. You aren't going to find them easy to obtain for Linux for example; calling them "ubiquitous" is a mistake. Times New Roman is much older and easier to obtain.
- tevon 9mo agoThe argument here doesn't hold up for me. The author states "The formality and authority of serif typefaces are largely socially constructed, and Times New Roman’s origin story and design constraints don’t express these qualities." Yes, formality and authority are both, quite literally, social constructs. There is NO "natural" or "universal" formality or even authority without human social input. I would also argue that, though most users cannot distinguish between a serif and sans serif font, they DO understand the serif fonts connote formality. eg in high school they were told to submit their papers in a serif font, or where they read a court opinion they also read serif (even if not the same font). Sure, the State Department could have selected a different serif font. But a reversion to what was previously used seems completely normal. Secondarily, I do think Calibri looks far too casual for the State Department. Its what I would use if I were quickly printing out my notes...
- sgnelson 9mo agoI agree with the critique on the "socially constructed" part of this article. I'd also add that since it was literally The Times newspaper which created the font, and it was considered one of the papers of record for the time (no pun intended), the font was probably designed to have a sense of accuracy, truth and authority. In other words, the institution that created the font is very much part of the socially constructed aspect of this font. In this case giving it that air of authority via it's relationship with a newspaper of record.
- sgnelson 9mo agoSince TNR was designed for print and thus it seems they expected the ink to "bleed" and make the characters appear thicker than they would have been for the actual (leaded?) type face, was this taken into account when turning it into a digital type face? From reading the article, it appears the answer is no. Has anyone made a TNR digital font that would account for how it would look if printed on 1900's newsprint?
- tracker1 9mo agoIt seems to me that you'd need to create something with a different name that supported more appropriate weight settings for screen and modern printing. That said, as soon as you head down this path, more variance will occur and in the end you'll have something even more different than just accounting for what happens to the text on news paper print. I might have suggested Roboto Serif or another OFL (or other open licensed) font face myself.
- mlsu 9mo agoIt's so frustrating. We already created a font for government communication, Public Sans. It looks great, it's very strong, neutral, readable, and respectable. Clearly a lot of effort went into making it accessible etc. But we have to throw that away because the wrong party was in charge when it happened. https://public-sans.digital.gov/ https://public-sans.digital.gov/ I'm so sick of this RETVRN crap happening seemingly everywhere. Yes, public buildings and typefaces and etc are uglier than they used to be. That's not because our aesthetic standards changed; it's because we financialized and technologized the entire economy and made it impossible to make an honest living as a plasterworker, typesetter, designer, etc. Those old buildings are beautiful because they were made by human beings who were allowed to develop their skills and aesthetic preferences outside of a completely efficientized, marketized, computerized system. When we RETVRN by telling the machine to output different aesthetic preferences, it will emit a cheap simulacra of the beauty of the past. Which imo is infinitely more depressing than any of the modern crap we have now. Think Kentucky suburb McMansions, everywhere, forever. That's what these guys want.
- llmslave2 9mo agoPublic Sans was created during Trump's first term tho.
- tracker1 9mo agoI think flushing out Public Sans as well as creating a Serif variant (akin to Roboto Serif) would be a great move. It really needs to fill in a lot of the international characters for more broad use, but probably enough for general use in Govt documents. That said, for print, I think serif is a better option.
- schmuckonwheels 9mo agoIn between all the political bitching, no one has ever noted the fact that TNR will render correctly on basically any computer built in the last 30 years, including crusty UNIX workstations from the 90s.
- willturman 9mo agoThis is mentioned in the post: > Indeed, the stronger explanation for Times New Roman’s long reign isn’t aesthetic excellence, but practicality and inertia. Times New Roman was among the small set of typefaces bundled with early versions of Windows. It was also promoted as “web-safe,” meaning webmasters could reasonably assume it would render properly across platforms. In the early era of digitalization, choosing Times New Roman was often less a deliberate endorsement than a default imposed by limited options. Over time, the habit hardened into a standard, and institutions began to require it without much reflection, effectively borrowing their own authority to confer authority upon the typeface.
- kps 9mo agoAnd Times is one of the three original Postscript core typefaces, along with Helvetica and Courier.
- jimbob45 9mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_typefaces_included_with_Microsoft_Windows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_typefaces_included_wit... Best as I can tell, Windows 3.1 only really shipped with TNR and Courier. Weird that I don’t see Helvetica anywhere on that list.
- kps 9mo agoMS went with Arial as a metrics-compatible substitute for Helvetica.
- necovek 9mo agoWhen I jumped into my GNU/Linux journey in late 90s, TNR was nowhere to be found, and I believe is only available through "ms-ttcorefonts" or whatever the package is called (IOW, Times New Roman actually comes from Microsoft). I believe "Times" is the venerable standard, and has been present on Unices and Macs since... forever. Now, TNR is the same metrics-wise IIRC, and thus it was always a recommendation to use a fallback line of the form "Times New Roman, Times, serif".
- paulvnickerson 9mo agoEnemies of this administration have no idea how to pick their battles.
- jgalt212 9mo agoThe serious piece, that wants to be taken seriously, is written in a serif font. That's my takeaway.
- macleginn 9mo agoMore precisely, Lyon Text Web.
- TheGRS 9mo agoI think this whole thing could be summed up by: this is an acceptable change made with wildly bad rationale.
- virtualritz 9mo agoTLDR; Not only is the new choice of font unfortunate at best -- the formatting reveals another level of amateurishness so very unbefitting to the ernestness one might assume the sender of the letter wanting to convey. ;) Basic typography: a paragraph starts with indentation if there is no blank line of any height after the previous one. And if it is not the first paragraph. In short: indent or put vertical space. Never both. The old TNR version gets this right: if you put blank lines between paragraphs, you don't indent. Then the date -- dangling god-knows-where, aligned with nothing. In the old version the only formatting faux-pas is the alignment of 'Sincerely' and if you're picky the outdent of the seal in the top left is a tad much (outside optical axis).
- lo_zamoyski 9mo agoThe last paragraph nails it: "Between the two, Times New Roman may be the lesser evil: it is more widely recognized, and it doesn’t clash with the official context as overtly as Calibri does. Still, [...] [t]here was no need to dress up a political gesture with faux-erudite claims or to lavish praise on a mediocre typeface." Times may not be great, but the choice of Calibri was one step away from Comic Sans.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- ogogmad 9mo agoI think they should have used Bastard. Here's a sample: https://museumcrush.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/letter-one.jpg https://museumcrush.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/letter-on... RETVRN
- amai 9mo agoWhy does the government not use PT Sans? A font created by Russian company ParaType to honor Tsar Peter the Great. Maybe that would finally convince Putin to make a peace deal and stop the war in Ukraine. At least PT Sans has great support for cyrillic script, which Trump will soon introduce because latin script is too woke.